Tyrant EP Howard Gordon Acknowledges Troubled First Season

While we wait to see if FX’s Tyrant will be picked up by another network, there’s been some interesting news from Tyrant‘s EP Howard Gordon. Apparently, he also felt the first season left a lot to be desired.

In a Sept. 7 interview with Deadline, Gordon gave his true feelings on that first season, which involved a host of offensive things as well as meandering characterizations.

GORDON: Well, I’m disappointed but not entirely surprised [about Tyrant‘s cancellation]. We were hoping for an eleventh-hour reprieve, but I’ve long known it was an uphill battle. But look, I also dn’t think the first season was our strongest season and that didn’t help matters unfortunately. I try to be pretty honest in my own assessment of what seasons worked and how they worked in relation to each other. We got off to a slow start and never really recovered from it, that’s just a fact.

I have to agree with Gordon. As much as I do love Tyrant, and as much as I can see its potential, I too think that the first season affected Tyrant for the rest of its television life. Even though the show began picking up steam towards the end of the first season and had finally found its footing in the second and third seasons, that first season still sticks in the mind as a season that didn’t give off the best impression. If anything, that first episode in particular seemed like it wanted to do as much as it could to garner its TV MA rating.

Howard’s surprising honesty has given me a good insight as to how the show was able to rectify itself, though. EPs who are honest about their own work and are willing to criticize themselves along with the TV critics shows a personal commitment to storytelling.

Hopefully, Tyrant can come back in some form. Perhaps it could even be rebooted in some way so that Howard can finally tell the story he might have wanted to tell from the get-go. Seems like Howard gives an indication as to what kind of story he wanted to tell, a story that was finally unfolding in the third season.

DEADLINE: And you had that speech by Annet Mahenddru’s widowed Nafisa Al-Qadi proclaiming that “Islam is peace”–not exactly a statement we hear on TV of late especially durig this election season.

GORDON: One of the ideas and one of the themes we had this season was the battle for the heart and the soul of Islam. Obviously, neither Chris nor I are [speaking] with any authority on that, but we did want to reflect voices in Islam that don’t get a platform or that stage enough in real life because they are blunted by louder, more violent and angrier voices. So we gave a fictional platform to some very real voices. Those are some of the voices that some of our regional consultants on the show felt the series had kept out of the story.

What do you think about Tyrant’s first season? Give your opinions in the comments section below!

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